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People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

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Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#211

Post by Gamemaster1379 »

devindotcom wrote: post #209
sowbug wrote: post #167

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed. The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediat…

Interesting to me that three different people have responded with the same "I'm also aphantasic and dream normally" start to their message.

When you express you have aphantasia to someone, one of the most common questions is whether you can dream. As someone with it: Yes I can dream. They're so real they are lifelike. And not just visually. In my dreams, reality and history itself can be different and to me, history didn't change. It just is.

I rememeber in one dream I was some sort of captain and I saw one of my closest friends. We'd been crewmates for the past 40 years and I remember all my memories with him and why I trusted him with my life. I was 22 when I had the dream.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#212

Post by jaggederest »

thrw9876543 wrote: post #67

I thought that I'll never be able to tell what non-aphantasia people see and how they perceive things. I see full blackness with some noise, but I can't visualize a thing. This was until I tried some magic mushrooms (psilocybin as main ingredient) and I was shocked that with my eyes closed I was able to actually see things, mental imagery, objects, etc. After the effects wore off, the blackness has returned I couldn'…

Same but in reverse, a certain psychiatric medication turned on an internal monologue I've never had before and it drove me absolutely, literally insane until it wore off. Never again. The most inane, moronic commentary about my day to day life as it happened, like Barney speaking through me. I normally experience the world wordlessly, mostly visually, and construct ideas and actions that way (thinking about, say, getting a glass of water, I'll picture the process), so having internal speech suddenly thrust upon me was awful.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#213

Post by jaggederest »

drcongo wrote: post #117
smusamashah wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you only remember facts, can someone else pretend to be that person you remember with those facts?

That's a fascinating question - I'm aphantasic and mildly face blind (I thought the two female leads in Disclosure Day were the same person for most of the movie and that we were jumping back and forth in her timeline). I've always assumed I'm face blind because of the aphantasia, but I know several aphantasics who have no problem recognising faces. In answer to the question though, no - even as someone with face bli…

Wife is the opposite - I still surprise her when I shave my beard without telling her. She doesn't seem to have any trouble visualizing though.

For reference, she didn't know the twins from "Property Brothers" were twins until I told her, after watching about, say, 6 seasons together.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#214

Post by jaggederest »

vidarh wrote: post #69
nelox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean? You can recite a description you’ve read or heard, but what about looking at a photo and describing it?

I can describe someone from memory, and I can draw them, but I can't see them unless they're in front of me (or I'm looking at a photo).

Can you draw them and then look at the drawing? I'm just wondering about the "bootstrap" ability, for lack of a better term.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#215

Post by jaggederest »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #143
IAmBroom wrote: post #142

A test was recently mentioned to me, regarding aphantasia vs visual thinkers. Imagine a cube that has a red top and bottom and front face, and all other faces are blue. How many edges are red on one side and blue on the other? Now, in solving that, if you are a visual thinker, you may have actually mentally "turned" the cube to "look" at the other side. I can exactly pinpoint doing that in my mind, to count the edges…

And how would non visual thinkers solve that?

Drawing? doing math around how many edges are common between the two? I turn it and count, but I could also do it other ways, including exploding it into flat shapes or conceptually understanding the nodes and vertices of the graph, or counting the edges and dividing by two since there are 6 total faces.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#216

Post by jaggederest »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #100
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are obvious giveaways. Among your friends and colleagues there are people who can’t sing and people with perfect pitch perception despite no training, ones that can barely coherently speak but can write beautiful prose and vice versa, some can stare at code for 12h straight while others find the sheer idea of it horrifying. There’s people who believe in ghosts or even believe they’ve seen ghosts while other…

I don't see how people being different from one another (uncontroversial, obvious basic fact) means that people have fundamentally different phenomenal experiences. You're conflating ability with experience when they are not the same thing.

Here's an easy test: If you imagine something, is it more or less vivid than your dreams?

Either way, you've established a difference in subjective phenomenology and there are people on either side of that divide.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#217

Post by jaggederest »

izzydata wrote: post #15
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is cope to avoid the realization that some people are walking around with drastically different life experiences.

I think a lot of people that can "see" in their mind are over-estimating their ability and a lot of people who can't are under-estimated their ability. It's probably a spectrum like a lot of things are, except in this case it is exceptionally hard to to know where you fall on it. The gap may not be as wide as it sounds. Almost everyone is still a functioning thinking human afterall. If the gap were so wide it seems l…

I spent an enormous percentage of my life very frustrated with other people because they couldn't just see the answer to things.

For example, I can put an engine into a car, and still tell you where every part of that engine is located relative to every other part, without being able to see it, including the internals, and describe, for example, over the phone how to troubleshoot it without being able to see it at all in person - just a mental model. And, for reference, I have almost no fundamental knowledge or experience with engines besides taking one or two apart - and it would not extend to other engines. It's been at least 20 years and I could still do it verbatim.

I'm way out on the end of that bell curve, but I'm not unique. I've worked with people who found that ability completely baffling, and would have to break out diagrams and blueprints to do that.

The gap is a lot wider than you think it is, it's not subtle, and this is known as the typical mind fallacy.

Edit: And funnily enough, further down there's a comment about Feynman realizing that his friend counts visually and he counts verbally - and I'm on the verbal side on that one, unless it gets complicated, and then I end up tallying mentally - but I have to count them verbally at the end.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#218

Post by jaggederest »

cheez-whiz wrote: post #88
izzydata wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people that can "see" in their mind are over-estimating their ability and a lot of people who can't are under-estimated their ability. It's probably a spectrum like a lot of things are, except in this case it is exceptionally hard to to know where you fall on it. The gap may not be as wide as it sounds. Almost everyone is still a functioning thinking human afterall. If the gap were so wide it seems l…

I'm not sure if people overestimate it either, some people just have strong memory and powerful mind's eye. My memory is probably from early trauma and represents the extreme other end. If anything it can be a detriment sometimes, I'm not sure a super powerful ability to picture stuff really impacts day to day living for the average human in history. There's no reason for it to disappear evolutionary if it's not a bi…

I feel you, in the same boat, though I can't actually isolate any trauma or anything like that, reliving unpleasant experiences verbatim is no fun. And the early 2000s was not a fun time with all the pop earworms running around.

It's funny, I've never met anyone but my family who can do this like I can, so cheers! I always say I don't have a perfect memory, but I don't know anyone I can test myself against except my mother, who can "relive a trail ride she took 45 years ago down to the plants and opening and closing the gates". Having to remind people about significant shared life events is a real downer.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#219

Post by D-Machine »

devindotcom wrote: post #209
sowbug wrote: post #167

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed. The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediat…

Interesting to me that three different people have responded with the same "I'm also aphantasic and dream normally" start to their message.

It is a good question because aphantasics that can dream normally are far less likely to engage in the sort of "aphantasia is just semantics" denalism that is largely disproven given modern science and online discourse. I.e. it is a very strong credibility signal that what follows is not just cope / self-delusion, but actually potentially useful and interesting self-report.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#220

Post by suslik »

sowbug wrote: post #167

I'm aphantasic. I dream normally, seeing all sorts of imagery. I have accidentally had a couple lucid dreams in my lifetime, which got me interested in the methods to trigger them intentionally, all of which have failed. The Wake Back to Bed (WBTB) method has been especially frustrating, because I'll see my usual nothing when my eyes are closed, but then for the very briefest instant I see a dream image that immediat…

I am also aphantastic, and I don't even get to dream properly. I had a dream perhaps no more than 10 times throughout my life, and almost always due to some unusual circumstances (very rough hangover, grief, broken heart). Even experiences with rather high doses of psilocybin or LSD were profoundly non-visual for me, and I made several attempts to get there.
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